Snap 410 Hard Drives?

[PP02]

Looking at a Snap 410 server and can't helping thinking there is a odd pricing structure going on -

Adaptec Snap Server 410 - NAS - 640 GB - rack-mountable - Serial ATA-300 - HD 160 GB x 4 £1426.44 inc VAT

Adaptec Snap Server 410 - NAS - 1 TB - rack-mountable - Serial ATA-300 - HD 250 GB x 4 £1673.19 inc VAT

Adaptec Snap Server 410 - NAS - 2 TB - rack-mountable - Serial ATA-300 - HD 500 GB x 4 £2348.81 inc VAT


Price difference between the 410 with 4x 500Gb and 4 x 160Gb is £922.37p

I can buy 4 x WD RE2 500Gb drives for £124.61 each, making total of £498.44, remove the 4x 160Gb's saving myself £423.93 plus have 4 x 160Gb HDD's that I can use as spare drives for my workstations. What am I missing here?

[blue68f100]

You will/may VOID your warranty doing so. This is one of the newer AMD CPU units. I know a lot of people that will not buy AMD. I think they have had bad experience with some of the older cpu's.

The the 410's I think were actually Adaptec Products, not Snap Appliances, but it is running the Guardian OS.

Adaptec is very very picky when it comes to providing support. If you need a 2T system buy a 2T to start off with.

You can just not swap the HD out's. You must go through a process of transfering the OS to the new drives.

[PP02]

They will void the warranty for swapping out HDD's on a item that is advertised as having Hot Swappable hard drives? harsh!

thanks for the reply.

[re3dyb0y]

Originally Posted by PP02

They will void the warranty for swapping out HDD's on a item that is advertised as having Hot Swappable hard drives? harsh!

thanks for the reply.

Possibly

The hot swappable are for if a drive dies, adn you pay them mucho $$$£££ to get a new drive....

[MaddMatt]

Apologies in Advance
I don’t know your circumstances and I do not mean to offend you but I must ask would you buy a new Porsche and immediately replace the engine and put the engine into a VW?

You need to consider is why do I want to buy this lovely 410 change the drives and be responsible to my director when it stuffs up and I haven’t got support or warranty? If it is for your home and you don’t have anyone to answer to, well it’s your call so go wild; I would love to hear that it went well.

Current Snap Servers like the 410 should not be touched unless you are loaded, if you want to do what you are planning go out and find a snap4500 that is just out of the 3 year warranty and go wild with your drives it will be a faster system than the 410 and it will probably cost the same if it is now 3 years old...

Why does the Snap cost so much?
Have you heard the expression “Position Position Position” in real estate?
For IT the cry is “Development Development Development – this has to happen otherwise you end up with another Net Gear NAS or some other Junky thing that doesn’t work properly.

Why do the Snap HDD’s cost so much?
As Adaptec have to support these suckers they need to know that you are only using the drive that they spec with the same firmware from the same batch etc etc, if the drives are all identical in every way there are far less issues that can arise and testing every combination of drive is not possible + they have to buy a bunch of them right at the start and this ensures their pricing stays high especially if they can not sell enough through and the drives drop a long way in price at the start – also they still need to get some more money back for the Development Development Development.

Hotswap?
[They will void the warranty for swapping out HDD's on a item that is advertised as having Hot Swappable hard drives? harsh!]
He meant swapping out a non-SnapServer HDD. – see directly above;

What is the story with support?
The support is 3 years return to factory and with the warranty back to the factory, from my part of the world it makes them hard to sell…
They do have support options;
- Bronze that gets you the software and phone support (still return to factory for hardware)
- Silver that gets you NBD onsite and
- Gold that gets you 24x7x4hr
If you don’t want to take them up on the support you should buy 1 or 2 spare HDD’s with carriers from Snap in advance put them on the shelf and then you check out the cost of the onsite’s and you would find that it would be better to just buy the Silver… then the whole thing would get replaced if there was an issue…

Bagging out Adaptec for being a Company is like bagging out Santa for coming at Xmas! They are extremely likely to be trying to make a profit (that’s what companies do) I am certain that they are doing well but they wouldn’t be doing as well as they would be expected to by their shareholders and some people on this forum.

I think it sucks that OS updates are no longer free but that’s Life, I used to get between Xmas and new year off without using my holidays and a week either side on skeleton shifts as well, but that has definitely changed too, to my deep regret!

I hope this has assisted you.

Matt

[MaddMatt]

I need to correct myself;
The gold & silver warranties are only available on the departmental and enterprise units, any current workgroup snap including the snap410, only has bronze support available for it, they do this to keep the "cost lower" on the entry level units and if you compare a Snap 510 640GB to a Snap 410 640GB you will see the differenece.

Workgroup = 110, 220 & 410's, this also includes the End Of Life units 1100, 2200, 4000, 4100, basically anything SnapOS (excluding 12000) that cannot be upgraded with an exterally attached box, like an sd 10 or a s50 (excluding the 510 that is also not supposed to be upgraded).

Departmental = 510 520 ranges and all S50's - this also includes the recently End Of Life units 4200 & 4500 and SD10, if you want to get them upgraded you still can.

Enterprise = 650, I think that the 550 has just gone EOL also along with the 18000, 15000, 14000, 12000,

Why can't you upgrade a 410 with the S50 - for all the grunt that a 410 has Adaptec will not allow it to be upgraded if the unit cannot handle it performance wise, the 510 is an exclusion because some remote sites only need small drive space but they will still want the silver or gold service available....

[MaddMatt]

UPDATE!.... I need to correct myself again;
Adaptec have just last week or so have included the SNAP 410 into the “Departmental” range so they can now be purchased with the Gold or Silver warranties as well as the Bronze, pricing on the spare Adaptec HDD’s in tray have also improved here as well.

In Australia we are starting to see some real sales numbers on the SNAP 410 640GB, 1TB and 2TB (There were no plans for a 3TB just yet when I checked - but it is inevitable they will eventually come).

Not sure about the acceptance in the US but according to a person in the know; In the UK the SNAP 410 is really being picked up in frenzy by the business market, many of whom must have put the pressure on to do onsite support, this has meant that the Co had no choice, I guess with the numbers out there it was an easy choice.

[Phoenix32]

Okay, but who can afford one?

[MaddMatt]

Nobody, or I should say no home user, but companies can and do;

I couldn’t afford to buy an Earthmover but earthmoving companies can because that’s one “tool” they use to make their “money making operation” more efficiently.
I couldn’t afford to buy an NewsPaper Press but publishing companies can because that’s one “tool” they use to make their “newspapers” more efficiently.
But I can afford a car and I can afford a USB Printer

I doubt that Meridian Data, then Quantum, then Snap Appliance and then Adaptec have ever planed to sell SnapServers to home users on mass; they seem to have only ever really thought that they can sell to Companies and all the marketing that I have seen is directed towards IT Managers and Companies showing how easy and stable they are to setup and use.


Home Users
No home users like you and I would buy one brand new, that’s what older inexpensive Snap 2200’s 4100’s and older models are for… older out of warranty units are for people who end up with these devices and see what else we can get out of them … if we did not know what a Snap was, or what we were doing we would do what 95% of home computer users do – buy more and bigger HDD’s… buy a USB attached HDD drive or buy a simple retail NAS.

Companies can afford them
Only a company would buy a brand new SnapServer. They have a great OS that has always delivered what companies need and they are supported. - IT guys need and have “insurance” with a new Snap Server, they have someone to blame if something goes wrong, they get warranties, options for onsite support because they do not want to be responsible to the director if it stuffs up and I haven’t got support or warranty?

If they want to be cheap they can build a Linux box with heaps of drives and a) they have to know how to set it up and b) if the motherboard doesn’t like the Storage HBA they have to deal with it… if they buy a snap 410 they plug it in turn it on and it is ready for setting up within minutes of getting it out of the box.

After the warranty is finished the “Old NAS” gets replaced by a new NAS, then it is used to house the IT guy’s MP3 collection and when the collection gets too big for that “Old NAS” he finds something bigger, then the “Old NAS” eventually finds its way, by whatever means, to people like you and me.


How they are used
I sell them to companies and they are purchased for;

Mass storage 3TB+ with the Snap 520’s – I have an organization that are going to convert every national news paper since 1900 to huge TIF files to archive digitally on a Snap520, they estimate that they need 40TB+, 520’s can manage 66TB’s with 750GB drives and 4x S50’s.

Specialized backup hosting/staging, Snap410 <2TB and for even smaller units like the 110, 210, ne 2200, 1100 for branch offices… I have a major utility who has a snap 2200 in each branch office they dump an image on the snap from their servers every A’ noon and the drawback backup images to head office’s datacenter every night, they have approximately 80-100 units ranging from the 80GB to the 250GB units.

Backing up from their servers to a SnapServer at network speeds over night and then from the Snap to a tape drive/library “off network” during the day, if they have a server failure they change out the server and draw the data back from the snap much faster than they could from a tape + they still get to take the tapes offsite and they would use them only in the instance of a complete disaster.

This is just a few examples of how companies uses these suckers, file serving what the snap was meant to replace is how my company uses its 4500 and we have an old 4400 that the tech’s use as a dump for all there gear and general scratchspace.

Snap Servers are definitly intended for companies I'm just glad to be able to get my hands on a few of the old ones

[Phoenix32]

ROFLMFAO

This happens to me every time I try to be short and politicaly correct... Someone always misunderstands what I was saying. So let me skip back to my normal, not so short and not so politicaly correct mode.

Okay, I knew all of that information long before you told me... I am a digital and analog computer engineering technician myself, so that was never a question.

What I was trying to say in a nice way was;

Uh, dude, that is cool and everything, but the people who come here for help most of the time, or try to help others, do not care about recent updates and/or developments or corrections to the hot new Adaptec Products that none of us is going to be able to afford for another 5 or more years (at least).

Yes, corporate people can afford those goodies, but they also can afford IT people who already know this stuff or know where to find it in a quick hurry.

And before you say it, yes, there are some other techs and IT people who frequent this forum as well. But these guys already know that stuff too, or can go look it up on the local adaptec advertisements page or ask salesmen like yourself on the telephone.

Now don't get me wrong, I was not by any means saying, "stop posting that useless crap". Not at all, and besides it would not be my place to do so. BUT, contrary to popular belief around here, I have a sense of humor and I like to poke fun at things once in a while. That was all I was doing... That and I have a well earned reputation to keep up. Right David?

Now remember, I was being nice, or at least trying to be. And even this explaination was nothing more than letting you know that I am well aware of that information and you do not need to feel compelled to continue to further educate me on the subject.

Okay? So can we stop the corporate sales pitch now? Thank you...

And yes, I am a sarcastic SOB. It is just who I am, and how I try to keep these dull subject a little fun.


Please note the artistic use of smiley faces...

[blue68f100]

Ott-O, Phoenix32 got up on the wrong side of the bed

Take your meds ad get back in your cage

MaddMatt, I thought your post was very informative on what Adaptec is doing. But most home owners of these units either were IT persons and knew about them. Or like my self had old Apples and these were the only NAS that supported OS8.6+. Or home users were looking for something better than the cheap NAS that is sold to the general public. I my self do not like buying junk.

Now Adaptec has a real problem on how they treat persons looking for help. There have been many IT persons through here because Adaptec told them to bug off. What they have yet to realise is that most of them have a say in what their company purchases. We had one user said they were going to replace all of their units (30+) with a competors due to BAD IT Support, after the warranty period. If a company cares for it's customers and has a good product, the Software support should exceed the hardware. At the minimum provide email support. SnapAppliance Did this, even if the unit was 5 yrs old. Adaptec DOES NOT, the reason this forum is so popular. And yes, I believe IP persons that are working on company owned hardware should seek professional help, cost of operation. But they get us, which most learned from school of Hard Knox.

Which is the reason most of us own discontinued hardware. And my collection has grown mainly due to the fact I like to upgrade from time to time. And some of the hardware was donated because it had a problem, or the user was being very kind to a person that has limited funds and spends his time helping others.

We do a service here that most users do not do. Once we get a unit we fully test it to make sure it is working correctly. If not we try to find out why. This is how we discovered the HW problem with the 4000. This info was only known by Quantum, but thanks to Andy's (Phoenix32) hard work and effort we all benefit.

[jontz]

Originally Posted by Phoenix32

ROFLMFAO

This happens to me every time I try to be short and politicaly correct...

Just goes to show you, don't stray from what you do best

[Phoenix32]

David, Jontz,

It's all good. The meds are working now...

And yes David, my back hurts like H E double toothpicks today.

But I was only being sarcastic and having a little fun...

[MaddMatt]

Originally Posted by Phoenix32

Okay, but who can afford one?

Hi Phoen

I guess that instead of saying "who can afford one", you probably should have said "who cares" and it would have been abundantly clear.
Thanks for your help in sharing with me the demographics of the forum.

By the way, the emoticons placements, they get me going so let yourself go baby…

Matt

[MaddMatt]

Hey Blue,

I’m glad you liked it but you are right, home owners or the tech guys here wouldn’t care but my heart started racing when an IT guy was going to buy a new 410 and swap the drives? I guess I should have held my comments...

I have had similar situations happen before and it usually ends up messy…

Matt

[Phoenix32]

Ah yes, I am in a better mood today (being loaded with Valium does make a difference), so I will just ignore that and move on, and I don't do that often....